Federal, state and local road transportation and highway departments have depended in large measure on the use of collected tolls for road maintenance and construction.
The efforts to collect road-use fees at bridges and tunnels in the form of tolls has resulted in traffic back-up at tollbooths with adverse effects to the environment, personal safety, and business enterprise. In municipalities, the parking meter has served as a passive toll taker, but this method of fee collecting has not been fully successful. Evidence of this is the recent, trial innovation of print-out time-parking receipts which are to be placed on a vehicle's dashboard.
Parking meters have proved to have labor intensive costs. Ill-prepared meter readers have often written inaccurate license numbers and street locations. Arguments in face-to-face confrontations between meter readers and motorists is common. Coin box theft and severe damage to meters caused by automobiles and vandals demands expensive repairs and maintenance.
Under the current methods employed by authorized toll collection agencies, a motor vehicle operator must subscribe to a transponder-type fee collection system or queue-up to pay the required fee in cash. Utilization of the “cash-only” process necessitates a toll collector who must complete the collection which involves a time-consuming event adding to delays and traffic congestion and untoward accidents. Transponder-type fee collections have been largely unsuccessful since a majority of motorists do not subscribe to this type of system.
In the matter of parking meters, the motorist has often been unduly punished and the municipality cheated of revenue. False coins put into meters and pilfering, and destruction of coin boxes are serious problems with the unguarded equipment.
Inclement weather may preclude the meter man's/maid's attention to the routine surveillance assigned to them in street parking areas, and often times, hard-pressed, in the hastily written summons, the meter reader may incorrectly cite an erroneous vehicle license number, and location, and the infraction concerning metered parking.
In large municipalities, the capital investment in equipment for towing and the cost for maintenance of a storage area for towed cars added to the needed salaried personnel may make the towing of cars a money-losing proposition. The traffic problems caused by double-parking in certain congested business areas of a municipality and the caravans of huge delivery trucks moving through the streets and parking on both curb-sides creates the difficulty of a single passage for traffic. The horde of leviathan trucks create the frenetic and hostile character of urban downtown business areas during daylight hours.
In municipalities, truck owners will receive fee-exemption credits if they utilize city streets during evening hours or can be afforded other incentives for time-sensitive vehicular activity.
Using proposed fixed and mobile scanning devices, this invention aims to construct a new and unique method for collecting road-use fees or tolls from all owners of registered vehicles regardless of the country or state that issued that vehicle's registration.
The invention relates to a method of collecting fees associated with vehicles for road usage wherein every vehicle contains its own unique identification code—similar or in concert with the known vehicle identification number (VIN)—comprised of a number, letter or symbol or combinations thereof.
Vehicle code readers (fixed or mobile) that transfer data to a central agency, or other appropriate means, are placed in selected area: entrances and exits to specified bridges, tunnels and highways. Municipalities will issue hand-held and auto-mounted vehicle-code-readers to police traffic managers who will in their normal course of activity scan designated streets to charge a fee for legal overnight parking, as well as for illegal double parking or standing, identifying the vehicle from its implanted I.D. code. The scanner is equipped to give full readings of date and time, and other relevant data as desired, to be programmed by the motor vehicle department, as well as the local police traffic manager. Traffic accidents can be immediately and easily recorded via the scanner and digital camera, verifying vehicle titles, insurance and the validity of licensed drivers. All these data can be instantly secured from stationery or mobile information capturing devices on moving or fixed I.D. codes.
Trucks and extended limousines can be assessed an additional road-use fee according to the number of axles and the approved laden weight, which incurs wear and tear of roads; and the limos will be assessed extended occupation of road and street space.
Most importantly, no current method provides for a passive, universal road-use system of collection of all vehicles.
The inventor is aware of the following U.S. patents which show efforts made to solve some of the problems described above: U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,097,292; 6,075,466; 6,010,074; 5,969,641; 5,955,970.